Is it SELL TIC or CHEL TIC
and, if either is acceptable, is it regional?
I’ve heard that ‘Kel-tik’ is the most correct, but according to m-w.com, either ‘kel’ or ‘sel’ is acceptable. Never heard ‘Chel-tic’.
Oh, and I used to say ‘Sel-tik’, because that’s the way the basketball team is pronounced (the Boston Celtics). I must’ve learned the other way in a history class somewhere along the line.
It’s sell-tick for the athletic team, but kell-tick for the languages (and the people who speak them).
It’s also Sell-tick for the Scottish football club, and a friend of mine who is a historian of said club has dug up some fairly persuasive evidence that that’s actually the original pronunciation of the languages/people as well, and that “Kell-tick” is a recent (say within the past 150 years) invention.
We should probably just remove the letter ‘C’ from the alphabet, or change it so that it makes a CH sound, then go back and change all the 'C’s masquerading as 'S’es to S, and all the wannabe 'K’s to K. As currently used, it’s idiotic.
Generally speaking, it’s pronounced “Keltic” when you want to be absolutely correct, especially in an academic context, “Seltic” when it’s a sports team.
This is because “Celt” is derived from the Ancient Greek word for this particular group of people, whom they called “Keltoi”.
http://www.inksauce.com/celt.htm
This is not correct, sorry. What did change during the last few decades was the slowly growing realization that the way it was being spelled in the English-speaking world–“Celt”–was incorrectly, and generally, being mispronounced “Selt”, since in English a beginning “c” followed by an “e” is always pronounced “s”, and an unofficial movement began, especially in Academe, to begin pronouncing it correctly as “Kelt”.
When I was in junior high in the 1960s, it was still generally being pronounced “Selt”, but now it’s sometimes even spelled “Kelts” in my kids’ textbooks.
An article from Digital Medievalist suggests that Celtic entered English twice, once through Latin and French, a language where it is definitely pronounced /selt/, and again through literary Greek, hence /kelt/.
So in conclusion, maybe everybody’s right, and peace returns once again.
As for removing ‘C’ or limiting its pronunciation, I’m afraid I just can’t allow that. I’m not going to spell Coca-Cola with a K like some heathen 
No need to apologise, but you haven’t actually demonstrated that it’s not correct.
Then shouldn’t that be ‘idiotik’? 
I had thought this thread would die once Wendell Wagner and Ruadh posted with the correct answer.
Surely what is deemed ‘correct’ in this case is the pronunciation used by those that come from celtic lands and those that have green and white striped wallpaper?
I think you’ll find that the accepted pronounciation is “Sellick”. 
‘Sellick’ ?
like the guy who played Magnum P.I. ?
I see the smiley but don’t get the joke !
Why think that? The term “celtic” is what those folk were called by others, not what they called themselves. And it has been demonstrated that the original pronunciation, from the Greek, is “Kel-tic”. Other languages may have altered it to the point where anybody is right no matter how they pronouce it (Spelled “celtic” but pronounced “smythe”?).
Would you ask a German how to correctly pronounce the English word “Germany”? It’s not even a german word!
Basically because if anyone asks me what my origins are I’d be forced to say ‘Kel-tic’ and nothing but, or else pretty much no one would understand me!
If I said ‘Sel-tic’ I’d be corrected by any other Irish people that were with me at the time…
I’d like to see you tell a typical Glasgow Celtic supporter that they pronounce it wrong
But the issue here is not how it was pronounced in the original Greek, but how it was pronounced when it came into English. If indeed it came into English through the Latin or French, then the “correct” pronunciation in English would be “Selltick”.
Ponster, the “joke” is that a lot of Glaswegians tend to slur their words so that it does indeed sound like “Sellick”.
Sorry, I thought that was self-evident. Your friend was claiming that the “Kelt” pronunciation is a “recent invention” that dates only from 150 years ago, but it actually was the original pronunciation 2,500 years ago, was temporarily discarded in favor of “Selt” probably somewhere during the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, due to a misunderstanding concerning its translation into Latin, and only recently, within the last few decades (not 150 years) has begun to swing back the other way towards “Kelt”.
If he’s got a reference that shows that the Victorians in the middle of the 19th century were pronouncing it “Kelt” while continuing to write it “Celt”, I’d be interested in seeing it. AFAIK up until the beginnings of a more politically conscious and ethnically sensitive era in the 1960s, everybody pronounced it “Selt” because in English, a beginning “c” followed by an “e” is always pronounced “s”.
Right, but see, that’s not the point anymore. The point anymore is to be more politically correct and ethnically sensitive, and to pronounce names the way their originators expected them to be pronounced, not the way your own personal cultural tradition calls for them to be pronounced.
The “correct” pronunciation of “Quebec”–in the current English tradition–is “Qwebec”. The correct pronunciation in French is “Kebeck”. So should we keep on pronouncing it “Qwebec”? Or should we all learn to pronounce it as the Quebecois wish it to be pronounced?
Greek & Latin has no “soft” C. (Neither does Elvish for that matter).
Thus, it had to originally “Keltik”. Note that “Caesar” would be pronounced closer to “Kaiser”.